The mentally ill president in 1965 political fiction
Rachel profiled this book, "Night of Camp David" by Fletcher Knebel, in case anyone is interested
Ted_Delphos
This Is Not Fine.
Feb 1, 2017
The mentally ill president in 1965 political fiction
The bill that became the 25th Amendment began as the bipartisan “Bayh-Celler proposal”, introduced in the House and Senate on January 6, 1965; it was passed after conference on July 6, and was approved by sufficient states on February 10, 1967.
While it was being debated in the Congress, a political novel raising the issue of presidential mental illness reached the best-seller lists. This was “Night of Camp David”, by Fletcher Knebel, one of the coauthors of “Seven Days in May”. In this novel, President Mark Hollenbach may be unfit to serve; as with the military coup conspiracy in “Seven Days”, the clues are shared by a small number of dedicated public servants who try to figure out what to do about it.
(One of the aspects of rereading the novel in 2017 is being reminded what a white male world U.S. politics was in 1965. The only female character with any role in the plot is the paramour of the male lead. There is a Black senator. A main character is Jewish. And that is pretty much it for diversity. And these are the Democrats, mind you.)
Today, when the terms “Trump Twenty-fifth Amendment” bring up 405,000 Google hits — when people are openly diagnosing him with Narcissistic Personality Disorder or worse — I thought it would be fun to look back at the behavior of the fictional Hollenbach which so disturbed the readers of 1965, and to see how it compares with the characteristics of the current president.
I. The President
As the action opens, a few years in the book’s future — maybe the beginning of 1972, a 1972 in which the Viet Nam War has apparently been a much more low-grade affair, and the late 1960’s were pretty calm — Mark Hollenbach has served for three years, mostly to general acclaim. A liberal Florida Democrat supported by a Democratic Congress, he is erudite, whip-smart, an experienced politician with rigorous ethical standards. No more than a couple persons in Washington or anywhere have any doubts about his mental stability.
The story is told mainly from the viewpoint of Jim MacVeigh, a capable though unambitious first-term Iowa senator with great respect for Hollenbach, who is considering him for his second-term running mate. MacVeigh soon discovers to his horror, though, that Hollenbach has three or four ideas which he considers to be clear evidence of insanity. Here they are:
II. Wiretapping
In the opening scene, at the Gridiron Club, Hollenbach drops what passes as a farcical remark: “I propose that the FBI be empowered to maintain an automatic tap on all telephones in the country.” Later that evening, though, in a tete-a-tete at Camp David, he explains to MacVeigh that he is in earnest:
“I’ve thought a lot about the rising crime rate, and … we’ve got to do something drastic. … it’s quite feasible you know, if worked through the Bell system. … It would have to be done carefully, with great legal restraints and protection, naturally. But no respectable citizen would have a thing to fear. It’s the hoodlums, the punks, the syndicate killers, and the dope peddlers we’re after. Automatic wiretapping, aided by computers to store the telephone calls, would drive them all out of business.”
Jim is horrified by this, and he’s not the only one. At a later point, Supreme Court Justice Grady Cavanaugh opines, “The most damaging thing you’ve said, to my mind, is that the President actually is considering a national wiretapping law. That seems incredible to me.” Jim replies, “That’s just the point. His mind has to be radically disturbed to come up with a thing like that.”
Stanley Karper, the Secretary of Defense, takes it just as seriously: “Now, in some ways, I find his serious idea of such a law the most conclusive evidence we’ve got as to the state of his mind. Even Hitler (!) didn’t dream up anything so methodically diabolical in the way of invading personal privacy.”
COMMENT: Obviously standards have changed; the national wiretap network envisioned by Hollenbach is not very far beyond our present “normalized” regime of taps and traces under the lenient jurisdiction of the FISA courts.
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https://medium.com/@T_Delphos/the-mentally-ill-president-in-1965-political-fiction-9fa535e71414
